


The Prerogative of Princes

by framboise



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Arranged Marriage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/M, Insecurity, Older Man/Younger Woman, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-02 22:02:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12735204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/framboise/pseuds/framboise
Summary: When Sansa has yet to conceive after a year of marriage to crown prince Aegon Targaryen the disappointment of the court spills over into blame.But how can she get with child if her husband prefers the company of men and will not lay with her no matter how she tries to make herself pleasing to him?





	The Prerogative of Princes

**Author's Note:**

> Background to this AU:  
> \- Rhaegar never read the prophecy and Rhaenys and Aegon are his only children.  
> \- Robert's Rebellion never occurred.  
> \- Aerys died of natural causes a few years after he died in canon, and when Rhaegar became king he worked to restore peace to the Seven Kingdoms.  
> \- Oberyn moved to court when Elia became queen to support his sister and therefore never met Ellaria.  
> \- Brandon Stark got himself killed in a fight in an inn so Ned still married Catelyn.  
> \- Sansa is sixteen when this story starts.

 

 

Sansa has never been as happy as she is on the day she marries crown prince Aegon Targaryen in the royal sept at King's Landing with her family and the court watching, with the sun streaming through the high crystal windows and the prince of her dreams by her side.

Although, she tells herself as they make their way down the aisle, she imagines she will be happier still when her first child is born and is placed in her arms to hold, a babe who might have the handsome white hair and violet eyes of her husband. She feels such a thrill to refer to him thus in her mind, her _husband_. Their marriage had been arranged when she was but a babe, as part of Rhaegar's plan to make alliances across the Seven Kingdoms and Sansa thanks the gods for the king's foresight, for there is no man, no prince, she would rather have than Aegon.

He is the prince she has always dreamed of - fair, gallant, courtly. He looks so handsome in his richly embroidered doublet and red velvet cloak, his manner suitably solemn when they are making their vows inside the sept. He has been so kind and attentive to her the few times they have met during their long betrothal and these last few weeks in King's Landing, he has not taken any liberties with her, nor stared at other women, or been brusque in manner.

It is true that he has not been terribly forthcoming about his own heart or shared any of his dreams or worries, but intimacy in a marriage is a slow-growing thing, as her mother has always told her, and Sansa supposes that they are almost strangers to each other, though she already feels she can trust him wholeheartedly.

When she dances with her husband after the wedding feast, her heart feels like it might burst with happiness and when she glances over to see her mother looking proud at the picture they make, she bites her lip lest she smile too wide.

"You are an excellent dancer, my prince," she says and he lifts his eyes from his feet to look at her.

"As are you, princess," he says and she feels a thrill inside her at her new title.

 

Sansa dances with Robb next who does not look as pleased as their mother but she supposes it can be hard as a brother to see your sister married.

"He will be good to you," Robb says, though it sounds more like an order than a statement.

"I know he will," she reassures her brother. "He is everything I dreamed of, Robb, I feel so happy I could fly."

Robb smiles at her but his eyes are still sad.

"You will marry soon, won't you, Robb? Mother says that Alys Karstark has caught your eye."

"Mother puts the cart before the horse, I don't plan on marrying just yet."

"Our children will be good friends, won't they? Your sons could squire at King's Landing and your younger daughters could be ladies in waiting for my daughters."

"Or your sons might foster at Winterfell," he suggests, "and your daughters, if they are as wild as Arya."

She laughs. "I would not know what to do with a daughter like Arya. I cannot imagine her running wild about the Red Keep."

"You will be a good mother, Sansa. King's Landing may be full of plots and schemes but I know that you will protect them like a she-wolf."

"As will the prince," she reminds him.

 

The bedding ceremony is frightening despite the jovial atmosphere and the laughs of the men leading her to the prince's bedchambers. Her wedding dress is so fine and she cannot help but mourn its loss as it is ripped from her and she is left in her thin shift and pushed stumbling through the door.

Aegon is waiting in only his small clothes and she blushes to see his body bared, the curves of his muscles, so much golden skin. He moves to close the door on the noisy crowd and hands her a cup of wine.

"Were you frightened, princess?" he asks, moving across the room to idly touch a silver box on the small table by the bed.

"No, my prince," she says, holding her arms by her side and trying not to feel naked being so unclothed.

"You are brave," he says with a small smile. He reaches up to stretch out his arms with a yawn, making her blush even further at the way his muscles move.

Should she approach him or should she wait standing here by the bottom of the bed?

"It has been a long day, shall we sleep now?"

She nods and tiptoes over to the other side of the bed. He must want to undress her under the covers. She pulls the embroidered quilt up to her chin and watches as he strolls around the room blowing out the candles. She will be braver in the dark, she thinks, and stifles the trembling of her limbs.

When he gets into bed the feather mattress quakes under his weight and her breath shivers, feeling the warmth of him next to her even though they do not touch.

He is silent for a long moment. Should she make some kind of signal that she is ready? Perhaps he is so gallant that he is waiting for her explicit consent.

He is her husband now so she is allowed to touch him, surely? She takes a deep breath and reaches her hand over to touch his bare, hot side. He jerks a little at her touch and lifts her shaking hand from his skin, putting it back by her side and patting it gently.

"There is no rush, Sansa, you are young yet to have children," he says.

"But the consummation, should we not-"

"I am the crown prince, I do not _have_ to do anything," he says, and she can hear the kind smile in his voice.

She feels a little stung that he is not overcome with his desire for her like in the songs, but songs are not real life, she reminds herself, and perhaps it is better to wait to consummate their marriage when they know each other better, it will be sweeter then, an act of love, not obligation.

 

When she wakes, it is mid-morning and Aegon has already left. She feels embarrassed as her new servants help her dress and change the linens, aware that there will be no signs on the bed or on her person that the marriage was consummated, though she tries to trust in her husband's words, that he is the crown prince and it is he who decides what he must do.

Jeyne Poole, her friend from Winterfell and companion here at court, arrives after Sansa has been laced into one of the new dresses Aegon has gifted her - Sansa is happy to wear southron dresses now, and not the itchy, ugly things of her childhood - and hugs her fiercely.

"So?" Jeyne asks her, giggling.

"What?" Sansa asks, peering in her mirror as she makes sure her hair is neat in its elaborate plait across the top of her head.

"How _was_ it?"

"What happens with my husband in our bedchambers is private," Sansa says after fumbling for something to say.

"Spoilsport," Jeyne says, sighing.

Her mother asks Sansa the same thing privately after they have broken their fasts with the rest of the family and Sansa tells her the truth, that Aegon wants to wait until she is older to have children.

Her mother smooths a stray strand of hair back from Sansa's face, looking concerned. "That is a wise decision. But consummation of a marriage is important, and moon tea can still be taken. You should let your husband know often that you are receptive to him, that you desire him, Sansa. I know it is embarrassing for us to speak of such things," she says, as Sansa turns away and tries to hide her face, "but laying with one another is an important part of every marriage, and a husband will not want to go without for very long."

"I will make myself pleasing to him, mother," she says.

"I know you will," her mother smiles, "and how could he not be pleased with you? You were the most beautiful bride I have ever seen in the sept yesterday, it brought a tear to my eye."

Her mother hugs her and Sansa clenches her fists tightly in her cloak. It is only now that the wedding is finished that she thinks of how much she will miss her mother and her family.

Aegon had invited her mother to stay in King's Landing but Catelyn preferred to remain in Winterfell. She said that it was not advantageous for a new marriage to have the bride's good-mother looking over their shoulders. Arya might have stayed too if their parents did not decide that King's Landing was no place for a girl who did not like rules and courtly manners. If Sansa had a sister of a similar temperament to herself then that sister might have been welcome here. Sansa hopes that the daughters she has are closer than she and Arya are, or that she has enough daughters that each might have a close companion of their own temperament.

 

She tries to be brave when she stands with her husband to say farewell to her family but she can feel the tears prick at her eyes.

When she returns inside, wiping her cheeks, Aegon squeezes her hand and says that he is due at the training grounds. She watches him leave alongside his close friend Ser Loras Tyrell, who had squired for him for many years before the prince had knighted him. Aegon's long strides eat up the ground and his good-natured laugh echoes off the walls.

It has been a week now since her wedding day and Aegon has yet to touch her but she supposes that one week is a very small amount of time in the years of a marriage.

A servant approaches to tell her that Elia wishes to speak with her and she follows the girl through to Maegor's Holdfast and the solar of the Queen.

Elia has had a weak heart since she gave birth to Aegon and her appearance at her son's wedding was a rare one for usually she remains in her rooms and the private courtyard and gardens in the Holdfast. Sansa remembers overhearing a conversation between travellers who had dined at Winterfell about the king's great love for his queen, for any other king might have put aside a wife who could not give him more children. Sansa is pleased to be married to the son of such an honourable man.

She is led to Elia's private garden, its walls green with ivy and walkways shaded by trees of lemon and orange, with a pretty fountain in the centre. Sansa hears Elia's high laugh before she sees the queen and smiles to herself at the sound of her joy. The queen is speaking with a dark, handsome man who is wearing orange silks in the Dornish style.

"And this must be the princess," he says with a pleasing smile.

"Sansa, darling," Elia says, "meet my favourite brother, Oberyn."

"Your favourite? Doran would not agree," Prince Oberyn jests and then bows deeply as Sansa curtseys.

She has only spoken with Elia a couple of times before but she sees how transformed she is by an audience with her brother, how full of life, and therefore she likes him already.

"I was sorry to miss the wedding, princess," the prince tells her, "I was told that you were pretty but I find now that the rumours were untrue, you are beauty itself."

"You are too kind, my prince," she says, smiling at his easy courtesies.

"Only honest," he says, taking her hand and kissing it. She remembers Aegon greeting her thus on a visit to Winterfell when she was a girl once, but he has kissed no part of her since her cheek in the sept the day of their wedding.

"Come, sit beside me," the queen says and Sansa heeds her wishes.

Elia looks even frailer up close, but still beautiful. Her hands shake in her lap and her breath is short. To live with a weak heart must be a terrible thing.

"You must be sad to see your family leave," the queen says, "I remember when I first moved here to King's Landing." She sighs, and twists her hands in her lap. "It is a difficult thing to join a new family. But I was lucky to have my brother alongside me."

Oberyn sits himself at his sister's feet and takes her hand, squeezing it.

"And soon I made a family of my own," Elia says. "Just as you will, Sansa. I wonder whether your children might have the colour of your hair," she muses, reaching out a shaking hand towards a plait.

"An uncommon shade in Dorne," the prince remarks, "like flame."

"I hope to have children with white hair like your son, my queen," Sansa says, smiling at the thought of such beautiful babes.

 

*

 

It is six moons since their wedding and Aegon has yet to touch her at night, yet to kiss her at any hour.

He gives her his arm when they walk, sits beside her at dinner and listens when she recounts her day, asks her how she likes the food and the music, and dances with her at feasts. She has an honoured place beside him on formal occasions and he treats her courteously in front of the court, with his family, and when they are alone.

He rides with her outside of the city every few days and they picnic together, along with Jeyne and her other new ladies in waiting Janei Lannister and Elinor Tyrell, with Ser Loras and other friends of Aegon too, while they are guarded by knights wearing gleaming mail.

Aegon is clever and quick with his wit but he is not cruel like other clever men can be, he jests lightly.

He is strong with his sword on the training grounds, Sansa has seen him beat many of the Kingsguard themselves, and he is almost as talented as his father with a harp.

The people love him and he has friends from many houses, his father trusts him to listen to petitions in his stead when he is travelling elsewhere, and gives him an honoured seat on his small council.

Aegon is just as courtly and gallant as Sansa thought he was, and yet he will not touch her.

It must be her that is at fault then. Perhaps her dresses are not pleasing to him, her hair, or her manner. But she does not know how to change her manner. He does not pay attention to any other women so she cannot model herself on them.

If her mother was here she might ask her, though it would be the most embarrassing of conversations, but who else can she ask? To ask would be to admit that they have yet to consummate the marriage.

She might ask Aegon but she could not bear for him to reject her to her face.

Instead, she changes her nightgowns from wool to silk and lace, and she dresses and undresses slowly in their rooms so that he might catch a glimpse of her in only her smallclothes. Her body is slim but she still has womanly curves that any man might find pleasing.

 

"Do you like my new dress?" she asks her husband one morning when she meets him for a midday meal on a balcony under a silk canopy. She has asked her seamstress to make her a dress in the Highgarden fashion. It bares her back and a large portion of her chest, though she asked for longer sleeves than the Tyrell girls might wear.

"It is very pretty, princess. But are you not cold on a day with such a breeze?" he asks, so kindly, and she feels shamed to have shamed herself and him. To think that she might seduce him with a dress!

"I will return to our rooms to change."

"You are welcome to use my cloak, princess."

"I should be happier with a different dress, my prince," she says, trying to stop her mouth from shaking, her hot eyes from crying.

She leaves her husband talking to Loras and hurries along towards her rooms with Jeyne at her heels, thankful that her two other ladies in waiting were not with her today, that she did not have a larger audience for her embarrassment.

She hears voices from her bedchamber as she approaches and pauses, holding Jeyne back.

"'Tis a shame," a servant is saying to another, "such a pretty thing, the princess. And the prince goes and spends all his time in the bed of his knight."

"But Loras is a pretty thing too," the other servant says and the two of them laugh.

Sansa feels her heart turn to ice. She wants to run, she wants to cry, but she must not make a spectacle of herself.

"Did you know?" she whispers to Jeyne, to whom she had confessed about her cold bed a few weeks into her marriage.

"No," Jeyne says, clutching her arm.

Sansa takes a deep breath and enters the room.

"Leave us," she says to the servants without looking at them, and when they are gone she lies on the bed and cries. She weeps and wails and hides her face in a pillow so that the noise does not leak out of the bedchamber.

For she knows that what the servants said is true, she _knows_. And the worst thing of all is that the rest of the court must know too and they will have been laughing at her since she came here. She had thought that her marriage was the beginning of a great romance when it was only a mummer's farce for their amusement.

Later Jeyne holds her as they lay together on the bed and strokes Sansa's hair, tops up the wine in her cup and sends her other ladies in waiting on long errands.

"Men who lay with men may lay with women too," Jeyne says to Sansa.

"Always?"

Jeyne sighs. "I do not know the ways of men."

"Nor do I," Sansa says and snorts a laugh that turns into more tears. "What can I do, Jeyne?"

"You must talk to your husband, you must speak to him face to face and ask for a babe. He will want a son, an heir."

"I know that I should," Sansa says, voice thick with pain, "but there is something about him that stops up my voice, that makes the room silent. It would take more bravery to speak than it would to face off against him on the battlefield."

"You _must_ , Sansa."

 

"I want a babe," she says without ceremony that night after her husband has blown out the candles and slipped into bed.

"Sansa..." he says, like he is her father and she has expressed a wish for an expensive sand steed.

"Please," she whispers. "Don't want to be a father?" she asks the dark, but her husband is quiet and does not answer.

The tears leak down the side of her face and pool around her head.

 

The next morning she does not want to get up from bed, she does not want to dress, so she does not. She lies there and shuts her eyes tightly and wishes she was back in Winterfell.

Jeyne rouses her eventually an hour before dark and tells her that a walk outside will help her. Will a walk give her a child, she wants to say, will a walk make her husband touch her.

She asks Jeyne to leave her in the courtyard alone and sits and stares at the birds bouncing from branch to branch in the trees.

Footsteps approach and she looks up to see Prince Oberyn.

"Princess," he says and bends his head.

"My prince," she says, standing up and curtseying.

"Please, do not stand on my account," he says. "May I sit beside you?"

"Please do," she says and he settles himself next to her on the bench.

"You look weary, Sansa," he says and she turns to look at him as he says her name.

"I did not sleep well last night."

"The Red Keep is noisy sometimes."

"It can be," she says diplomatically.

"Does my nephew treat you well?" he asks and she cannot read his face.

"Of course, my prince-"

"Please call me Oberyn."

"Oberyn," she corrects, "he is kind and gallant and true."

"I remember when he was small, small enough to bounce on my knee." He smiles ruefully. "He was a sweet boy who became a courteous young man. He will be a good king, one day," Oberyn nods thoughtfully.

Sansa smiles weakly.

"Yet he is also just a man," he continues. "Princess, should you ever need to speak with someone, someone of a similar rank, a prince for example," he smiles and his eyes twinkle despite the seriousness of his tone, "then I should be happy to listen, to help. The crown prince is my nephew and as a brother to the queen I have no need to curry favour, I am not at court to bend and bow for a new alliance. You do not know me well enough yet to trust me, of course, but I wish that you might come to, Sansa."

"Thank you, Oberyn," she says, absorbing his words.

"Princess," he says, standing up and taking his leave.

"Oberyn," she responds and he smiles at her use of his given name.

She watches him leave and lets her eyes drift back to the birds in the trees. Does she believe him? She is uncertain. His words are pleasing but if she had thought that Aegon was true to her only to find out that he was not, then how can she trust her own instincts?

 

*

 

Aegon heads off on a long hunt with his friends, with Loras, leaving her with a kind pat of his hand on her shoulder. Like she is a pet, she thinks meanly.

With the prince absent she feels almost more weary, hollow. She should be sewing clothes for her babe now, embroidering blankets, she should be fat with child and receiving letters from all corners of the Seven Kingdoms, well-wishes and promises of squires and ladies in waiting for her children. Instead she drifts through the halls of the Red Keep like a ghost and everyone that passes her looks pointedly at her stomach, and she must sit with the other ladies of the court while their babes are brought back and forth by wet nurses and maidservants and cooed over by the other women.

She does not tell her other ladies in waiting that her and her husband do not lay together but surely they must know, they spend enough time in her rooms, they are allowed inside when she is not there, their families must ask them to check the bedlinen, to report back on Sansa's courses.

 _There will be schemers at court_ , Sansa's mother had counselled before they had left Winterfell. _You must treat everyone with kindness and courtesy but be wary about sharing secrets. You can trust in Jeyne but your other companions will have other allegiances too_.

She has done as her mother said but now she feels even more wary of Janei and Elinor, for surely they had known from the start that the prince was bedding another. Did they laugh at her too? Do they pity her?

 

A travelling singer from the far reaches of Essos has arrived at court and performs for the king and queen at a feast one evening, in a rare public appearance for Elia, and as Sansa sits next to Princess Rhaenys she tries to concentrate on the singer's sweet voice and not think of how everyone in the room must be staring at her and finding her at fault.

It is only the second time she has met the princess, who has travelled from the riverlands to introduce her daughter to the king. Rhaenys has another child, a son she had borne to the late Robert Arryn of the Eyrie who had died of a shaking sickness a few moons into their marriage, and that boy resides at the Eyrie with a regent. Sansa cannot imagine being so separated from her son but she supposes that since she is not a mother she does not truly know how motherly feelings work.

It was said that the king gave Rhaenys a choice of her next husband - the golden lord Joffrey Baratheon who was of an age to her, or a much older Edmure Tully, and she had surprised many by choosing the latter. Janei spoke once of how hurt her cousin Joffrey was by the princess' decision, how he had wept, but Elinor had then retorted that it was probably his mother who had wept, since all know how ambitious she is, and then Elinor and Janei had almost come to blows and Jeyne had had to pull them apart from one another.

The king aimed to heal the rifts his father had caused to the kingdom by betrothing his children and his siblings to as many of the great houses as possible. Princess Daenerys had been wed to Willas Tyrell and they are said by all to be very much in love. The king's brother had been betrothed too but he has never wed, for he fell pray to the madness of the Targaryens and is kept in quiet comfort at Dragonstone.

The singer is singing of dragons and when Sansa turns to look at the king there are tears in his solemn eyes. The king is still as handsome as he was as a young man, the court says, he has not let himself go to ruin like many men of his age - drinking, whoring, overindulging on food. He trains daily in the archery field and on horseback, and spends half the day in his private library studying old scrolls and books. There is something otherworldly about him, Sansa thinks, a stillness, a gravity. He looks at the court as if they are children, she sometimes thinks, children who run about wildly while he must try to corral them to seriousness. She remembers being glad once that the prince was not quite as solemn as his father, that he seemed easier with his friends, more jovial.

 

After the feast, when the dancing has begun, Lord Petyr Baelish approaches the head table, bowing deeply to the royal family. He has a gift for Princess Sansa, he says, which he has been given by her mother, Lady Stark, on his recent travels north.

Lord Baelish had been her mother's foster brother and it is said that he had been in love with her sister, Lysa Arryn, since they were children and was planning to ask for her hand before she killed herself in grief after her son died. He has a position in the royal treasury now and she has heard it said that he can conjure gold seemingly out of the air. Jeyne has told her that he owns several brothels in King's Landing which shocked Sansa when she first heard it, though now she thinks that if the crown prince has such a secret, then why shouldn't everyone else at court be connected to scandalous things.

"Princess," he says, bowing deeply as he hands her the varnished wooden box.

"Thank you, Lord Baelish," she says, feeling her chest ache in longing for her mother.

"What has your mother gifted you?" Rhaenys asks, her dark eyes curious.

Sansa opens the lid carefully and her heart sinks to her toes. "It is a beaded rattle," she says, her voice stuttering. She will not cry now, she will not. Her mother does not know, her mother thinks she will soon be with child.

"Sansa," Rhaenys says, reaching over and clutching her hand excitedly. The rest of the table are busy talking or on the floor dancing and Sansa thanks the gods for that.

"I am not with child, princess, it is a gift for the future."

Rhaenys smiles encouragingly. "It will happen soon enough," she says. "If it does not then the maesters here at court know many potions that will help."

"Thank you," Sansa says and hopes the darkness of the hall hides her pain.

"Thank you again, Lord Baelish," she says, clearing her throat and turning to him.

"I am at your service, princess," he says, smiling at her a little sadly and then bowing deeply.

 

She sees Lord Baelish again the next day whilst walking in the gardens. Jeyne and Elinor are playing a card game in the shade and Sansa's mind is scrolling through superstitious riddles - if she does not step on the cracks between the tiles on the floor the king may bed her, if she holds her breath for counts of seven the king may bed her, if she says a hundred prayers to the Mother in the time it takes to walk this particular path she may have a child.

"Princess," Lord Baelish says, bowing deeply.

"Lord Baelish," she replies. They are walking slowly along a quiet path lined with palms and flower beds. Most of the court is attending another audience with the singer but Sansa's nerves feel too fragile to sit in front of the court again so soon.

"I wanted to apologise, princess, for it seems to me that I should have given you your mother's gift in a more private setting than the great hall, for I could tell that it moved you to sadness."

"You were not at fault, my lord," she says, not wishing to draw attention to her loss of control yesterday.

"You must miss her dearly," he says. "I lost my mother so young, and am not yet a father myself, so I forget how strong the bond between mother and child may be."

She bites her lip and feels her chin twitch.

"Lady Stark spoke of how proud she was of you, if that is not too bold of me to share, and how much she looks forward to meeting her first grandchild," he says.

His voice is soft, quieter than the birds who twitter about the garden, but they feel like blows against her heart.

He clears his throat. "I have found that some men lose their nerve when faced with a beautiful woman in the bedchamber," he remarks suddenly, softly, and she stops in her tracks.

"Lord Baelish-"

"Wine may help with that," he continues, ignoring her attempt to halt this conversation, "and so may certain potions," he says, watching her closely.

She pauses.

"Certain potions that help a man overcome any hindrances, help him relax so that his lady might lead in such matters."

"I do not know why you speak to me of these things, Lord Baelish," she says, trying to be firm.

"Forgive me, it is improper of me to speak thus, you are right. You look so much like your mother I forget that we are not close like she and I still are." He bows, "I hope that I have not blackened your opinion of me irrevocably, princess, I wish only to serve you, out of my brotherly love for your mother. Forgive me."

"You are forgiven, my lord," she says, and he leaves her with another bow.

She stands where she is and looks up at the towers of the keep, clenching her fists inside her long sleeves. How soon before all and sundry are giving her advice, offering fertility herbs and charms?

 

*

 

A few weeks later Oberyn invites her out on his ship for a day trip to a bay along the coast and she happily agrees, wishing to leave the watchful eyes of the court behind if only for a day.

The day is bright and the winds are strong and Sansa's hair soon loosens itself from her braids and she lets it fly free, while Janei and Elinor struggle to keep theirs pinned.

Oberyn points out landmarks to her, tells her the providence of every boat they pass and what it has in its hold, the routes they might have taken from half the world away.

They stop at a pretty bay and Oberyn dives into the water in only his breeches to swim the lines to shore. Sansa watches him clamber up the rocks and tie them to a tree.

"He is very handsome," Jeyne remarks.

"Do you think so?" Elinor says, "I think he is too old, too _Dornish_."

"You worry you wouldn't compare to his many lovers, you mean," Janei says slyly and Elinor flicks some water from her cup at her.

"Why has he never married?" Sansa asks curiously.

"Because he is too greedy, he cannot give up his lovers."

"Nonsense," Jeyne scoffs, "he does not wish to leave his sister, that is all."

Once, Sansa might have been sad for Oberyn never marrying, but now that she has an unhappy marriage of her own she thinks he might have the right of it, though she will admit that to no one. There is still time, she reminds herself, still time for Aegon to decide that he wants her to bear his child.

Oberyn swims back to the boat and treads water at its side.

"Will you join me for a swim, ladies?" he calls out, as a few of the crew jump in beside him.

"I don't think we are suitably attired, my prince," Sansa says.

"Then will you come out in the rowboat?" he asks and she finds herself nodding, leaving the others behind to clamber down a ladder and into the little boat.

She is expecting Oberyn to climb in and row her but he says he will swim and push her that way.

"Like a mermaid," she says to him and he laughs and almost swallows the seawater.

He swims behind the boat, his legs kicking up a spray of water that feels pleasant on her hot skin. The water here is clear and calm and she peers over the side to look for fish and buried wrecks.

They are a fair distance from the ship now and he stops, moving to fold his brown arms over the side of the boat, breathing heavily.

She turns to look at him and he smiles at her; a broad, happy smile. The sun is glinting off the drops of water on his skin like gold. He is so different from his nephew, she thinks, his kindness towards her does not seem like a show.

"Are you rested enough to swim us back?" she asks.

He slips from the boat and lays on his back in the water. "I fear I am not," he says mournfully, "and we shall drift now forever more."

She leans over the side and splashes him playfully. "Oberyn," she says.

He heaves a heavy sigh, "as my princess wishes," he says and swims closer to push her back to the ship, tossing his head back to shift the hair from his eyes.

Back aboard, Oberyn teaches the four of them how to play a Dornish game of dice, asking them to swear they will not share where they had learned such a thing, and in turn they teach him how to play a skipping game that they had all played in their childhoods even though they had grown up in different lands. To see a grown man holding one leg and hopping on the swaying deck is enough to make Sansa's legs weak with laughter.

Oberyn has the servants bring out fruit and sweets and they lie back on pillows under a silken canopy and gorge themselves, becoming half-drunk with good humour, and setting each other off into fits of giggles at the memory of Oberyn's earlier hopping, while he tells them they are terrible for laughing at him so.

 

Yet all the happiness of the day vanishes when they return and step onto the harbour to find a maester hurrying towards them.

"Prince Oberyn," the maester says breathlessly, "the queen has collapsed. She lives," he says, as Oberyn clutches his arm tightly, looking wild, "but she is weak."

"I must go, Sansa," he says, bowing shortly and striding off.

The queen is becoming frailer, Sansa is told later, and must spend more time resting. Elinor says that the maesters had suggested she leave for the quiet of Dragonstone but that she refuses to part from Rhaegar.

The court is solemn and watch Sansa more closely than ever. Sansa will be the next queen, but she has yet to have a child.

 _It is not my fault_ , she wants to tell them, a phrase she sometimes whispers to herself when she waits in her rooms for Aegon to arrive late to bed. _It is not my fault_. But a crown prince is blameless, so who else _can_ be at fault?

 

*

 

A year into her marriage - and a few days after her husband has given her anniversary gifts, a diamond hairnet and a pair of silver songbirds inside a pretty silver cage - the king calls her into his library.

"I hope you have found a happy home here princess," he says, sitting behind his desk which is so laden with books and scrolls that Sansa fears its delicate legs might buckle.

"I have, Your Grace."

"And are you pleased by your marriage?" he asks, rifling through his papers.

"I could not ask for a husband better than your son, Your Grace."

"He could ask for no better wife, he has told me this himself," he says, smiling at her.

She smiles back but it feels hollow.

"You are not yet with child," Rhaegar states, dipping his quill into ink and making a mark on a page.

She feels her toes curl in her shoes. "I am not."

"Do you know why?" he asks, and then he sets aside his quill and opens the large gilded book in front of him.

"He will not lay with me," she blurts out and Rhaegar looks up, startled.

"The prince will not lay with you?" he asks in a baffled tone of voice. "Why should this be?"

"I do not please him."

"Now that is a lie, surely," he says and smiles so kindly, smiles just like Aegon does. "Do you not wish to lay with him?"

"I wish for nothing more. I sleep beside him unclothed," she says, feeling the shame burn her insides, "I try to kiss him."

Rhaegar watches her so calmly. She wishes Elia was here, Elia is truly kind, she thinks, not this strange veneer of kindness.

"He prefers the company of men, Your Grace. He shares his bed with another."

Rhaegar looks back down at his book. "That is a bold claim," his eyes flash up to hers. "A false claim. And I do not care to hear it again." He does not raise his voice, his power is clear without it.

"Princess," he says, dismissing her and she curtseys deeply before him.

She is pleased that her tears only start to fall when she has left the library, but it is a such a meagre pleasure to be worthless.

She pulls her veil over her face and retreats in tears to the godswood.

 

Some time later, hours or minutes she cannot tell, Prince Oberyn finds her there and she cannot find the strength to hide her tears.

"What has made you so upset, princess?"

"I had an audience with the king."

Oberyn frowns.

"Surely you have heard that I am not yet with child," she says, smiling bitterly.

"You are young."

"And surely you know that the prince prefers the company of his knight to that of his wife, exclusively prefers." The king has left her feeling empty of her concern for courtesy, cracked open to share her inner woes with everyone, it seems.

"I knew about his relationship with Loras, yes," he admits, sitting down beside her on the roots of the heart tree.

"Then why must you ask why I am sad?" she says, her voice breaking.

"Forgive me, I did not want to be so bold," he says, staring up at the red leaves of the tree and then back to her. "I knew about the prince's preference for men, of course, most of the court did, and you should have known too from the beginning, if your parents had informed you."

"They did not know," she argues.

"I am sure someone in your family knew, a brother, a guard, a servant who travelled from Winterfell. You should have been better prepared," he shifts in his seat, "but perhaps they thought as I did, believed as I did, Sansa, that the crown prince might be able to put aside his pride and get you with child soon enough. He must have an heir one day, why not now?"

"I do not know," she says in a small voice. "It is as if the whole court is performing some grand mummery," she says, "the king said that I lied, but he offered no advice for what I might do to _move_ his son," she says, hearing a note of scorn enter her voice.

"Your marriage is yet young, my sister did not conceive straightaway and the king is still in good health. There is no hurry," Oberyn reasons.

"The court does not see it thus."

"Hang the court," he scoffs. "I will ask my nephew what in the seven hells he is doing," he says and then reaches a hand to hold hers, "but I promise I shall not mention you, I swear it, I will simply inquire after his marriage and lack of heir."

"He will say nothing. He is good at that," she says, and then hides her face with her hands, "forgive me. He is good to me, he does not deserve my scorn."

"A man who will not touch his wife is not good to her," he bites out.

They sit in silence and listen to the hum of noise rising from the city. Sansa has spent more time in the royal sept praying than here in the godswood because it reminds her too much of home.

"I cannot speak to Elia about this because her heart is growing weaker still, the worry might harm her. And Rhaegar," Oberyn sighs heavily, "Rhaegar is a cold, inscrutable man and he spends half his life with his head hidden in books, as if he wishes to ignore the world. Yet Elia loves him, she will hear no word against him. He is fair, he is not cruel, but neither is he truly kind. Targaryens think themselves a world apart from the rest of us, and the court bends before them."

"You should not say such things about the king," she says weakly.

"Only the trees can hear us here," he says.

They are quiet for a moment and then the great bells of Baelor's Sept begin to ring.

"You are lucky to have never been married," she says.

"Do you think so?" he says. "My sister finds it sad, she is forever nagging me to find a wife whenever I speak with her."

"You have never met a lady who you wished to marry?" she asks, turning to look at him.

"Once," he says, reaching out to pick up a red leaf that has dropped from its branch, "but she is taken by another."

Sansa watches him twirl the leaf in his hand and then set it down beside him.

Perhaps his love is in Dorne and that is why he remains here at King's Landing, she thinks, so that he is not reminded of her at every turn.

It does not make her feel any better to learn that others are also unhappy in love, because a part of her still wants to believe in songs, in romance.

 

*

 

A tourney is to be held for the prince's birthday and the court swells with visitors from every noble house in Westeros. Janei and Elinor gossip endlessly about the eligible men and the knights that are to enter the lists: how they look, what their kisses might be like, to whom they might be wed.

Jeyne, who is better than the other two at finding out information, at hiding in plain sight around the keep, reports back that most men have their money on Ser Loras to win, with a handful on the crown prince, and others on knights who have yet to be seen in a tourney at King's Landing and whose skills are somewhat unknown. Sansa is frightened for Aegon to joust, frightened for all of the knights once she sees the first man knocked from his horse in a bloody mess.

But it is not just jousting, there is archery too, including a competition for some of the women, even though the older members of the court mutter that it is distasteful. If Arya had journeyed down to King's Landing, Sansa thinks she would have easily beaten them all, but Winterfell is recovering from a fever and so none of her family has made the journey, to Sansa's great sadness. It is Lady Margaery Tyrell, Loras' sister, who is favoured to win the archery.

Sansa met Margaery the day before the tourney, when Elinor introduced them in a courtyard after the Tyrell's formal presentation in the throne room with the rest of the visitors. She is very beautiful, even more beautiful than Ser Loras, she has heard some say snidely, and she has a kind manner and a sweet voice. Margaery's body strains at the seams of her tight dresses and Sansa sees men of every age watch as she walks past. A part of her thinks that if Margaery had been married to the crown prince she would have surely been able to seduce him, even though she knows that this is a foolish thought, as Margaery lacks the same parts that Sansa does.

 

The king has drawn lots for the order of the jousting, and the crowd are disappointed to hear that Loras and Aegon will be facing off against each other in the first round, for this means that only one of them may make it through to the rest. Janei says it is unfair of the king, that he should have drawn the lots so that his son, to whom this tourney is dedicated, might have made it to the final. Elinor says that Janei is just saying that because she has money on Aegon, while Jeyne reminds them both that drawing lots is the fairest way of organising the lists, and that by their very nature lots cannot be weighted.

Sansa is barely listening to them, she is busy watching the horses of her husband, and her husband's lover, take their places opposite one another. She supposes she should be grateful that it is Loras who Aegon jousts against, because Loras shall not harm him.

Aegon is unseated with the first blow and stands up quickly, waving to the crowd who cheer in relief. On his next tilt he unseats Loras, and the cheer of the crowd seems to shake the stands. In the last, Aegon is knocked off his horse and dragged a few feet before he fights his way free of the saddle. He lies there for but a moment before Loras gallops over and helps him up and Sansa's heart is in her throat. The crowd scream with joy when Aegon stands and waves but Sansa is too busy watching Loras' arm about her husband's shoulder, his thumb, bared of its glove, stroking at Aegon's neck.

Sansa tries not to watch them when they are together, she prays often to never catch them in the act, to never see a kiss, an embrace, a tenderness that she has never received from her husband, and to notice it now, in front of the crowd, guts her.

She takes a deep breath and holds a hand over her racing heart.

"Are you unwell, princess?" Margaery asks, leaning over from her seat near the royal box.

"I am fine, thank you, my lady," she says.

"Your husband did you proud."

"Your brother was the better," she concedes.

"My brother has more time to play at jousting, he does not have to rule like the crown prince," she says, sounding indulgently fond of Loras.

 

Over the course of the three days Loras wins the tourney and presents his winning flower crown to the lady of flowers herself, his sister Margaery, who stands and is cheered by all. Sansa knows that if her husband had won he would have presented Sansa with the crown and the crowd would have cheered just the same, even though most of them would have known it for a mummery. Sansa had looked down at her lap and traced the embroidery on her sleeve instead of watching the moment when Aegon had handed Loras the crown, because she did not want to see how happy they looked together, how joyous.

Margaery wins the archery competition, rallying from behind against a plain girl from the riverlands who surprised everyone by almost winning, and then it is time for the melee.

Aegon told her this morning, as he raced off early from bed to meet with his friends, that he had decided to enter the field, leaving the room before she had time to find her favour to give him. But there is another surprise entrant as well, Prince Oberyn Martell, the queen's brother.

Sansa hears a ripple of noise in the crowd when the knights and lords entering the melee are announced and paraded in front of the stands, and she gasps when she sees Oberyn wearing boiled leathers and silks, and not the steel of most of the other knights.

"Oberyn has never entered a tourney," Janei marvels, "not in all his twenty years at court."

"Why is he not wearing mail?" Sansa says, clutching the railing in front of her.

"Many of the Dornish favour leathers," Daenerys says from a few seats down. She has brought her newest babe with her and is bouncing the silver haired boy in her lap while her husband sits beside her holding her spare hand. They are in love, any fool could see that, and Sansa is so jealous her heart aches.

When the fighting starts the field is a mass of clashing swords and weapons, of shining armour and whirling limbs, a cacophony of sound. One by one the men are felled and leave, or are dragged, from the field, until only a handful remain, Oberyn and Aegon among them. Oberyn is fighting with a spear, and in an extraordinary fashion, twirling, leaping and pouncing as if he is a snake. His opponents lumber about in their plate, half-blinded by their helmets, while he seems to toy with them, to hit them before they have even noticed he is there.

Oberyn and Aegon are the last to remain standing, uncle and nephew circling each other over the churned up ground, as the crowd gasps and cheers and stamps their feet quick enough to sound like thunder.

Sansa has a hand clasped to her mouth but she cannot look away as Aegon thrusts and parries, as Oberyn turns and ducks and then leaps up to hit the crown prince square in his chestplate, once, twice, until the crown prince staggers back and falls. Oberyn leans over him, spear pointed to his neck.

"Yield," Sansa sees him say, through the noise of the crowd, all his usual humour vanished.

Her husband nods but Oberyn leaves his spear there for just a moment before pulling back and dragging Aegon to his feet, waving his hand to the crowd, bowing before the royal box with a proud smirk on his face.

Aegon is smeared with blood and sand and smiling too, though not as wide and, Sansa thinks, somewhat chastened.

Oberyn takes the vine crown he has been offered and says that he shall wait to give it to his chosen lady, and the crowd think of the poor queen, hidden away in the palace from the noise and stress of the tourney and they clap loudly as if she might hear a quiet echo of the sound behind her thick walls.

 

Oberyn finds Sansa and Jeyne walking amongst the tents later, two guards trailing listlessly behind them.

"May I speak with you, without your guards?" he asks Sansa.

Sansa looks at him and then at the men. "Of course," she says and the two guards lumber off to the side. Jeyne wanders a few feet away but does not leave her and she is relieved though she cannot say why. Oberyn looks fierce in his bloodied armour, dirt still smeared across one of his cheeks, spear still in his hand. He would never hurt her, she knows, but his intensity makes something in her quail-

"I could lie and tell you that I did not enter the melee on your behalf," Oberyn says suddenly, "that I did not wish to challenge your husband, but I am not fond of lying to those dear to me."

"Oberyn-" she begins, and then trails off, unsure of what to say in response to his confession.

"I have beaten him and shamed him but what use is that to you?" Oberyn says. "It is your pain to be meted out to him and not mine." He glances away. "All men are fools in different ways," he says. "Here," he adds, brusquely handing her the vine crown.

"Is this not for Elia?" she asks, curling her fingers around the leaves.

"I cannot tell Elia that I was in the melee, it would worry her too much, and besides, I won it for you," he says, eyes flashing, and then he bows and leaves her.

Jeyne reaches out to take her arm.

"He is a good protector to have," Jeyne comments.

"I do not need this kind of protection. I do not need his spear," Sansa says, heart racing in her chest. "I don't understand," she says, shaking her head.

"We should hide this in my cloak," Jeyne says, taking the crown from her loose hands. "He cares for you, Sansa," Jeyne says as she leads her back towards the keep, "that is all there is to understand. He wants to help you, and he cares for you."

 

After the tourney is finished and the crowds leave, a letter arrives from her mother, ferried personally by Lord Baelish again, whose presence at court is a continual reminder of his offer of potions, of the dark things Sansa might do if she were truly desperate enough - and how soon might that be?

Sansa sees why the letter was delivered personally when she opens it privately and finds her mother's strong words.

... _Rumours are reaching us here in the north that cannot be borne. They say that you have scorned your husband, that you refuse to visit his bed. I cannot believe that a daughter of mine could do such a thing. If it is true, you shame your father and I greatly, you bring dishonour to the north. I urge you to put aside your foolish pride and give your husband and the crown the heir that they so dearly wish for_...

 

*

 

Four moons later, the king calls her into a meeting of his small council.

She stands before the king and his advisers, trying to hold herself straight and tall, to be brave. If her husband was not a coward he would be here too, he would stand by her side.

"We have noticed that you are not happy at court, Sansa," the king says, and she feels the lack of her title like a dagger. "You are a gentle soul, too gentle perhaps for the position you have been given."

She stands there and listens to the king's veiled insults, the measured words of his advisors. The meaning of their words is clear. She has not conceived a child, the marriage has not even been consummated, and she is entirely at fault.

She does not remember returning to her chambers, only that she cries for the rest of the day while her handmaidens come and go. Let them tell everyone of her shame, of how she weeps, of how she is a worthless pitiful thing.

 

When evening comes her chamber is quiet and her tears are her only company. Jeyne has disappeared, perhaps she too has got sick of her crying. A knock at the door rouses her. Is it someone else come to berate her?

She opens it wearily, without bothering to arrange her face into politeness.

Oberyn is there, with Jeyne hovering behind him.

"Your lady thought you might like a visit to the godswood, princess," Oberyn says, looking pained at the picture Sansa must make.

She opens her mouth but cannot find the words to speak.

"Come, Sansa," he says softly, and takes her arm gently. "There is pleasant breeze tonight and the sky is clear enough to see every star." Jeyne strokes her head and Sansa lets herself be led away by the prince.

She finds her words again when they have sat underneath the heart tree, drawing strength from its presence.

"I am to be sent away from court," she says to Oberyn, "and Aegon shall marry another. The high septon will set aside our marriage by saying that I am _barren_ and none will wish to marry me," she cries, wiping her tears from her face. "The king has spoken to me of all the _good_ that the silent sisters do, of how I can work on my embroidery there and help so many people. And Aegon is so kind and _reasonable_. And yet he will not talk to me, he stands there silent."

She feels herself shake, her hands curve into fists so tight her nails almost pierce the skin of her palms. She could scream, she thinks, she could scream and scream and never stop but then they would only say that she was mad and cart her off sooner to the silent sisters.

"You might marry yet, Sansa," Oberyn says, kindly, reaching for her hands. "You will hurt yourself thus," he says, peeling her fingers loose, "Aegon is not worth your pain," he says.

Her head lifts sharply and she stares at him but his face is inscrutable. "Who would marry a barren, broken thing?"

"But you are _not_ barren, Sansa, you are still a maiden. You are one of the most beautiful ladies in the Seven Kingdoms, highborn, courtly, kind, clever and loving. Any man would be lucky to have you. _Aegon_ is lucky to have you, he shall find no bride better. It is to his shame that he has not respected to you."

"You should not say such things, he is the crown prince."

"He is my nephew, and he is cruel in his silence, he is cruel to _you_ and were he a child again I would spank him for his insolence, I have already beaten him in the melee for it. You are blameless, Sansa, you could not have tried any more than you already have."

"I could have," she says in a small voice. "I might have made him drunk with potions and taken him as he slept, stolen a child from him."

"Potions?" Oberyn asks, bending down to meet her eyes, "and where might you have gotten such things?"

"Lord Baelish offered me potions, he was close to my mother once and he has tried to be my friend too here at King's Landing."

"Has he," Oberyn says obliquely and then he sits back. "Sansa, you were right not to trick Aegon, though many might not see it so. You have honour, and that is worth more than its weight in gold. A child should not be conceived without consent."

"I wish so dearly to be a mother," she says and then begins to cry again, hiding her face in her hands as he places a warm arm around her.

If only she had been married to someone like Oberyn, she thinks, traitorously. He would not have scorned her, he would have been kind and loving and would have told her to her face if he had not wanted her.

 

Within the day it seems that everyone at court knows that she is to be put aside by the prince, everyone except the queen herself who, Elinor reports back, shall not be told until she has regained some of her strength, for fear of what the shock might do to her heart.

Sansa wishes selfishly that Elia might never be told, might never know how Sansa has failed her and the crown, and after the queen has been so welcoming and kind to her. In the first few moons of her stay in King's Landing, Sansa used to sit in the queen's solar and embroider while they listened to singers and music played by a blind septa with hands as soft as feathers on her harp. Sansa had looked forward to many years of such calm company, of bringing her children to be fussed over quietly by Elia.

But Sansa shall have no children, no husband, no family.

 

She hides away in her rooms, in the gardens and courtyards of the Holdfast, in the godswood. And Aegon hides from her in turn.

He had come to her the morning after the king's pronouncement. He had said very little.

"I am sorry that I could not make you happy, Sansa," he had told her, the first time he had even hinted at his part in the breakdown of their marriage.

"You might have made me happy, it would have been easy to do so," she had replied but he only stared at her kindly, and then took his leave of her with a deep bow.

She has been given new rooms now, still in the royal apartments but smaller and higher in the tower. Perhaps they mean to push her higher still, to lock her in the attic, she wonders.

Ravens have come from Winterfell, from her father and her brother, outraged and shocked, demanding to know what has happened, why such an insult has been made to the north. A party from Winterfell travels to King's Landing and will arrive in half a moon's time. She cannot wait to see her family, to be held in their arms, but she knows that she will feel so ashamed to have them look at her, to have them know how she has failed.

Elinor and Janei have been removed as her ladies in waiting and only Jeyne remains but Sansa is pleased by this, pleased even more when she learns who the prince is to marry next.

The Lady Margaery, the sister of the prince's lover, shall be the next princess, the next queen.

Sansa has no need to warn her of Aegon's foibles for she will already know, unlike Sansa at her own wedding.

 

*

 

A week later, a few days after Sansa has had to sit through the ignominy of the high septon's interview and has been officially set aside, Jeyne comes banging into her bedchamber. Sansa pulls back from the window she has been listlessly staring from to see what has her friend so flustered.

"Sansa," Jeyne says, "I have heard-" she gasps a breath, "-the news has spread through the court. Prince Oberyn has asked the king for permission to marry you!"

"Prince Oberyn?" Sansa asks, clutching a hand to her chest. Her heart is beating fast and her mind is whirling, she does not know what emotion she feels. "You are sure?"

"Yes," Jeyne says, "I imagine he will call for you soon. We should get you dressed."

Sansa nods absentmindedly as Jeyne hurries around finding the right dress and setting out brushes and pins. She trusses Sansa into one of her favourite dresses of a silver fabric with long bell sleeves lined with fur.

"Leave the back of my hair loose," Sansa says as she looks at herself in the mirror, noticing her tired eyes and sunken cheeks. Her appetite has deserted her these past few moons. "In the northern style," she says, sharing a look with Jeyne in the mirror.

"I hate southron hair fashions," Jeyne admits, "what is the point of having lovely long hair if one must twist it up and hide it away. It gives me a headache," she admits and Sansa laughs, a short sudden laugh that shocks them both.

Her insides feel as if they are fizzing. Is she hopeful? Worried? Does she even want to marry Prince Oberyn? Does he really wish to marry her? Might she still be a wife someday after all, a mother? She clenches her fists in her lap and closes her eyes. Better not to hope, she tries to reason, if she does not hope then she cannot have her heart broken again.

A servant knocks at the door. Prince Oberyn desires her company in the godswood.

 

He is standing at the foot of the heart tree regarding it thoughtfully, his hands held behind his back. She allows herself to look at him in a manner she has not before. He is handsome, his profile proud, his body well-formed and strong. His walk is lithe, she could picture it even with her eyes closed; his eyes are wellsprings of emotion, wicked and tender by turns. His lips are full and when he speaks his mouth seems to savour every word.

Her foot steps on a twig and he turns around to see her. He smiles at her, a little nervously she thinks.

"Sansa," he says when she has reached him, "I imagine your ladies might have told you in advance the reason why I have asked to meet you, and I will not waste time with empty talk."

He reaches out to take one of her hands in his. "Sansa, I care for you, I desire you, I wish you to be my wife."

Her breath leaves her in a shudder. She licks her dry lips.

"The king has agreed?" she asks.

"He has," Oberyn says, giving no hint as to whether this was an easy agreement or one hard fought.

"But surely your brother, your country, would not wish you to marry someone like me, someone ruined?"

"I am not the heir, and I am the queen's brother. It is my royal prerogative to marry who I wish," Oberyn says. "And besides, you are the most eligible young woman in the Seven Kingdoms, and other men are fools if they do not see that. I shall hear nothing of you being ruined."

He squeezes her hand and then kneels at her feet. "Sansa, will you marry me? You do not have to, you may marry another, you may wish to wait a few years and I can ask you again."

"I shall marry you, Oberyn, I wish to," she says, eyes caught by his.

"Good," he says, "good," he repeats and then he rises and holds her head in his hands. "Can I kiss you, Sansa?"

"Yes," she says, nodding and lifting her face to his.

His lips are softer than she thought they would be, the brush of his stubble on her chin startling, She feels the touch of his tongue to hers and almost jumps at the jolt that passes through her. He draws back and brushes a kiss on her cheek, strokes his thumb across the same spot.

They sit in their usual spot on the roots of the heart tree and discuss their betrothal.

"I would take you on a ship to Dorne in a week's time," he says, "but you can journey north to spend time with your family first if you wish, and have this be a long betrothal."

"My mother would not have me," she says, shaking her head.

"Dorne will be happy to have you, Sansa. My brother looks forward to meeting you, and my niece and nephews, all of our bannermen and the noble families of Dorne."

"I fear that I do not know enough about Dorne, I have much to learn about your customs."

"You have the rest of your life to learn about my country, _your_ new country."

He has not let go of her hand since he first took it, playing with her fingers, stroking her skin, and Sansa finds it pleasantly distracting.

"Do you not wish to remain here by your sister's side?" she asks.

Oberyn huffs and rubs his jaw. "Elia has given me a stern telling off. She demanded to know what was happening and whether the rumours were true. I told her that I did not want to hurt her and she said it was her heart that was weak and not her mind and I do her a grave disservice by treating her like a child." Oberyn smiles and looks towards Maegor's Holdfast. "Elia thinks it is high time I got married and she wishes us both great happiness in Sunspear."

He lets go of her hand and brings both of his to smooth out the lines of his robe. "And besides," he says, "I could not remain here and watch my nephew marry another in the sept, I fear we would only come to blows." His anger is clear to her, even though his body is arranged casually. "Aegon will be a good king, my opinion of that has not changed, but I do not like him very much as a man at present."

 

*

 

When her family arrives at court they have already received Sansa's letter informing them of her new betrothal and of the circumstances of the breakdown of her first marriage, after Oberyn offered her the use of his personal messenger to put the letter directly in her father's hand.

It is her sister who runs to find Sansa first, up the many winding stairs to her tower room.

Arya is a young woman now, all the more beautiful because she does not look like the pampered southron ladies of the court. Her plait is not neat and she wears a strange short dress over trousers, but Sansa could not care two figs what her sister wears. She hugs Arya tightly, startled by how tall she is now, and Arya hugs her back just as tight.

"I would challenge Aegon to a duel, and defeat him in your name, Sansa," Arya mutters into her ear, "You have only to ask, and I'll do it. I'll put itching powder in his suit of armour, throw rotten fruit at him. I'll cut his cock off," she swears and Sansa laughs and hushes her, wiping the tears from her eyes.

"The only thing I want is to never see him again," Sansa says.

"And you shall never have to. You can stay in Dorne and learn to fight like the women there do-" she looks at Sansa "-or embroider or do whatever it is you proper ladies do with your time," she smiles kindly and then lifts her chin. "I admit that I'm a little disappointed that Prince Oberyn has asked you to marry him, if only that you will be soon with child and then I shall have to marry too soon enough. The ravens asking for my hand in marriage had started to trickle away the last few moons when they thought we were both barren."

"Arya!" Sansa says, outraged and laughing as she hits her sister on the arm.

"And violent too now! What has the court done to you, sweet Sansa."

Sansa smiles but feels her mouth wobble. "It has almost destroyed me, sister," she admits.

"Pah! Us Starks are made of stronger stuff. In one year, in five, in ten, you will forget you ever came here, you will forget about that little shit who calls himself the crown prince."

"Arya! Hush," she says, trying to cover Arya's mouth as her sister ducks.

Robb comes in then and his frown lifts at the sight of his sisters making a mischief of themselves.

"Arya, father wants you," he says and Arya leaves Sansa with a wet kiss on her cheek and hurries out.

"Just as wild as you remember?" Robb asks her as they watch Arya leave.

"Just as wonderful," Sansa says.

"Aye," Robb says, and then his face grows serious. "Sansa, I had heard rumours about the prince and his lover at King's Landing before the wedding but I didn't think he would be so craven as to continue, I did not think he would dishonour you so." He holds her face in his hands. "I should have said something, but you were so happy. I didn't want to prick such a happiness, it was selfish of me."

"You are forgiven," Sansa says, and then walks over to the window where Robb joins her. "How is mother?" she asks.

"Mother is stubborn," he says.

"I was supposed to bear the next king. She blames me."

"She does not understand. Father is so honourable that she thinks all men are. The north is furious, Sansa, some of our bannermen have called for war, while others have suggested he marry Arya in your stead." Robb sighs, "Arya was so angry with that idea that she ran away for three days and I found her living in the woods like a wild woman with leaves in her hair."

"The king will offer the north recompense," Sansa says, "he and his advisers told me all when I met them, putting me aside will bring the north more riches than my marriage did. He has offered to give father a seat on his small council, to lower taxes, to send five thousand men to bolster the Night's Watch, to betrothe your own child to Aegon's first child."

Robb snorts angrily. "I would have none of the Starks marry into such a family as this again. No gold, no goods, could remove the insult he has made, Sansa. And a good king should have already given men to the Wall."

"Could I have done more, do you think? Could I have tempted my husband in some other way?"

"No," he shakes his head. "He is the only one at fault."

Her father expresses the same when he speaks with her, though there is much they do not say, dancing around the real reason why Aegon has set her aside. When her father is not busy meeting with the king, with his own advisors and bannermen at his back, returning from his audiences with a stormy face and an angry shake in his voice, he finds the time to meet with Oberyn and the Dornish. Robb says that Ned's manner in these encounters is an odd mixture of threatening and thankful.

"You are sure that you wish to marry him? He is so much older than you," her father says to her one evening.

"If his age is the only thing I can find to set against him then I am quite content to marry him," she replies and her father smiles sadly at her.

 

Her family will not be accompanying her to Dorne, though Robb promises that he and Arya will visit later in the year, but someone else close to her will.

"I will come with you to Sunspear," Jeyne says a few mornings after Sansa's betrothal has been announced, "I have it in mind to find myself a Dornish lover."

"Jeyne! Not a husband?"

Her friend shakes her head, "not yet, I want to have some fun first."

"I shall not stand in your way," Sansa laughs, "and nor will I be writing letters back to your father of your exploits."

"You are a good friend, Sansa," Jeyne smiles.

Sansa turns more serious, "I wish to be a better one than I have been at court, I know that I leaned on you in my unhappiness."

Jeyne shrugs. "It is not a burden to be needed, Sansa."

Jeyne helps her pack her belongings, and passes her handkerchiefs to cry into when each dress unveils a pained memory in Sansa's mind, each gift from Aegon cuts her to the quick. She longs to leave them here - the jewels and boxes and ornaments and books - to throw them out of the window of her room, even as she knows that this would be the gravest of insults. _Graver an insult than setting you aside?_ Jeyne wonders snidely.

 

*

 

On the day of her departure, she and Jeyne journey down to the harbour in a closed carriage and Sansa feels herself holding her breath, waiting to hear horrible things through its doors from the people of King's Landing, jeers and shouts and insults, but Oberyn has chosen to leave soon after dawn and no one in the city seems to notice, or care, that she passes by.

Sansa stands on the deck of the boat as it leaves, refusing to cower in her cabin. She stands and stares up at the Red Keep in the distance and cries angry tears, feels her heart flutter in her chest, her nails dig into the ship's railings. Can she make a better life in Dorne? She will do everything she can to make her second marriage a better one, but did she not give everything she had to her first too?

Oberyn approaches and stands beside her, resting a warm hand on her shoulder, and she reminds herself that she will not be alone in this marriage, that another will be there to help bear its weight.

 

She sleeps fitfully, anxiously, on the journey, despite Oberyn's comfort and the good cheer of the Dornish company on the boat who dance and sing and make merry as if they are shaking themselves loose from their confinement inside the narrow halls of King's Landing.

As the water slips past the boat she feels her last life is slipping away too and it leaves a nervousness behind. She had known since she was small what her future would hold, had been certain, but now that certainty is gone and all that is left is hope.

"I shall give you no gifts," Oberyn tells her one evening as they stand and watch the sunset on the horizon, "until we are married, until I have made you mine. I will not have you hold them and think they are a replacement for my love for you, a consolation prize."

Sansa cannot imagine now how she had missed Oberyn watching her so closely at court, noticing her sadness.

She has no such worries as Oberyn, and leaves him for a moment to retrieve his favour that she sewed in her last days at King's Landing, and hands it to him nervously.

He brushes a thumb across the golden sun, the spear.

"I am sorry that I was not able to give it to you before the tourney," she says.

"I am embarrassed to remember what I did that day, though I know that I would do it again," he says, and places the favour carefully in his pocket.

He moves forward to put his arms around her and she leans back on his chest and sighs. "Tell me about your home," she says.

 

When they arrive at Dorne she finds that Oberyn had not exaggerated its wonders. Sunspear is so different to King's Landing, to the north. It is warm and colourful; the air smells of spice and the salt of the sea, the fruit from the many trees in the palace gardens; the men and women wear colourful silks that skim their limbs and flutter like flags in the wind; the food is hot, the wine thick, and the pastries sweet enough to make her tongue ache.

Oberyn proudly shows her around the palace and the city, holding her hand and stopping often to brush kisses on her face, beaming like a boy when he greets old friends, nobles and servants alike, and introduces her to them. He has missed his home dearly, and Dorne has clearly missed him too.

She meets Prince Doran who thanks her for bringing Oberyn back to his side and for finally encouraging him to marry, pointing to the white hairs on his head and saying how many sleepless nights Oberyn has given him, though she knows by the fond smile on his face and Oberyn's rolling eyes that he jests.

There are still plots and plans at the Dornish court, Oberyn has warned her and Doran touches on the same, but far less than at King's Landing where all the Seven Kingdoms vied for power and influence, and Sansa feels her body relax here from a tension she did not know it held. It is only with distance from the Red Keep that she has come to realise that she might have only been a pawn in the games of others, that her failed marriage may have been plotted from the start by those who hoped to put their own queen on the throne someday.

 

*

 

A few days after her arrival in Dorne, after the date of their wedding is fixed for one moon hence, Oberyn visits her solar. It is evening and the room is filled with the scent of incense, the flickering light of candles, the warm breeze that threads its way down from the deep sands.

"I wished to talk to you of our wedding, of consummation," he says and she pulls her shoulders back and clasps her hands before her.

"To lay together on our wedding night without any other intimacies previously will not be conducive to a relaxed state, to pleasure. I propose that we work our way up slowly," he says, "I can see you frown, you are worried that I will never touch you. Let me explain."

He draws nearer. "The first week we might focus on kissing, with lips, with tongue, lightly, deeply, quick and slow," he says.

He touches her mouth with the tip of his finger and she feels her lips part with a sigh.

"The second week we might move our mouths down to the neck, the shoulders," he says, voice deeper, running the same finger down her neck and making her shiver, "kissing, sucking, licking. And the week after that we might touch each other over our clothes, let our hands roam free," he smooths a hand around her waist and dips his mouth closer to her ear. "The fourth week we might strip ourselves of clothes and use our hands to touch each other. The fifth, we might use our mouths."

He kneels before her and she can barely stand up she feels so overwhelmed, so inflamed. "I have longed to put my mouth between your thighs and feast on you Sansa, and once I have you will wish to have me there each day and I will gladly do so. Shall I go on?"

She nods and he smiles a wicked, happy smile.

"And then I might use my fingers inside of you, to stretch you, to pleasure you," he says, smoothing both hands around her hips, and then tightening them, holding her firmly, "and then I would take you. We would lay together and I would spill inside of you and we might make a babe."

She covers her face and smiles so widely even as she feels tears leak from her eyes, even as her belly flutters.

"Do you agree with my plan? Do you think it a wise one?" he asks.

She nods and nods again, and he stands and peels her hands away and kisses her. "The first week begins now," he murmurs between kisses as she balances on her tiptoes and kisses him back.

 

Sansa had thought that she was happy on her first wedding day but on her second she sees now that it had been a childish happiness, a surface emotion that lacked the real depths of happiness hard fought, of love.

The evening of her wedding, after she and her husband have lain on the bed in their rooms and kissed until she is almost breathless, Oberyn admits to her that he had wanted her since he first saw her in that courtyard at King's Landing, that he had fallen in love with her soon after and that it had pained him to see her married to another, even more so when he saw that she was unhappy. He is sheepish when he tells her this as if he has tricked her into marrying him but she reminds him that his actions towards her were always honourable, and tells him that she does not wish for him to ever apologise for wanting her.

Laying with him is everything she ever dreamed of and more. She had once seen bedding as a duty and an act that might encourage love to grow between her and a future husband, but she had known nothing of desire. She does not know now if she ever desired Aegon, she had only wished to be wanted by him, to lay back and have him act upon her, but with Oberyn she is not content to wait to be touched, she wants to touch him just as much, to make him groan and shake, she feels hungry for him.

Oberyn has fewer obligations than Aegon had, with Princess Arianne taking over the lion's share of the ruling duties from her father, and Sansa is selfishly glad for this in those first few moons of their marriage when she cannot keep her hands off him, when he seems to have his mouth permanently attached to her body, when she wakes from a doze aching and well-loved and cannot fathom what the hour might be or what day it is.

 

"You are quite distracted," Jeyne says one morning when Sansa has decided that she must not lay in bed forever and has left a pouting Oberyn to sit in her solar with her friend and embroider. Sansa has pricked her fingers half a dozen times already, her eyes sliding towards the door that leads to Oberyn's solar, her ears straining to hear the sound of his voice as he meets with Martell bannermen.

"I am not," Sansa argues and then drops her needle for the fourth time and Jeyne laughs.

"And if I were to ask you what we ate an hour ago at breakfast?" Jeyne says.

"The usual foods," Sansa says primly, looking down at the mess she has made of her embroidery, and then sets it down and laughs and falls back on the couch in a most unladylike fashion.

She turns her head to look at Jeyne. "I am not the only one who has been distracted," she says pointedly and watches as her friend's cheeks colour.

"I do not know what you mean," Jeyne says, trying to look serious.

"I believe that I am not the only one in this room who shares a bed with a Martell."

Jeyne sets her own embroidery down and bites her lip. "You are not angry?" she asks, turning serious.

"No," Sansa says, shifting her head back and forth on a cushion. "I was surprised when Oberyn told me about you...and the princess, but how can I begrudge you happiness. You are happy?"

"I am," Jeyne says, smiling widely, "though I am sad that once our dalliance is at an end I will have to console myself with lesser nobles," she sniffs dramatically, "they say that after you have had a princess every other lover is a disappointment."

"Jeyne!" Sansa exclaims, throwing her cushion at her head.

"I jest, I mean only that my eyes are wide open, that I do not see my affair as a grand love story like yours, not this one yet."

"If I had been told as a girl that I was not to marry the crown prince, but a Dornish prince who was twice my age instead, I would have wept for days and cursed the gods. Now I only thank them, even if I am bruised that I had to experience such sorrows first," Sansa muses, staring out at the blue sky through the silk curtains of the balcony.

 

*

 

Three moons later, Oberyn comes to her with a grave expression and a missive in his hands. Princess Margaery is with child.

The crown prince shall have his heir, the seven kingdoms shall have a beloved queen far better able to play the game than her, and Sansa will be forgotten, she tells Oberyn while he appears to grits his teeth on the words he wishes to say.

The news might have gutted her just a few moons ago, and it does still cause her to cry for hours, hiding her face in Oberyn's silk tunic, but her heart is distracted by recent news of her own. For Sansa is with child too.

She could scarcely believe it when she missed her first moonblood, and her second, but Oberyn had brought forth a parade of maesters and healers who all told her the same, that she would bear a babe. Yet she does not truly believe it until she feels her babe quicken inside of her, grow larger and start to tumble and roll. Oberyn seems just as enamoured, he spends hours in their bed resting a hand on her stomach, watching the movements of their child that can be seen beneath the skin when she grows larger, the hours that he is not seeing to her pleasure and wild appetites that is.

 

The birth of her first child is difficult, long and more fraught than she thought it should be, but at the end both babe and mother are neither truly worse for wear. Oberyn is with her in the birthing room and she is thankful for that, relieved that he does not leave her to face a woman's battle alone. And when their daughter is placed in her arms it is he that cries first, while Sansa roves her eyes over the perfect little girl they have made, before turning to kiss her husband and thank him for making her dreams come true.

Their daughter has her father's brown skin and black hair, and Sansa's eyes.

"She will have her mother's bravery too," Oberyn murmurs as they sit and watch her little face scrunch up in sleep, "and her mother's beauty."

"She will be daring like you," Sansa says, turning to look at her dearest husband, "and kind. And she might marry for love, just as we did."

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> please comment, I'd love to hear what people think!
> 
> my tumblr: [framboise-fics](http://framboise-fics.tumblr.com)
> 
> and there's a rebloggable photoset for this fic [here](https://framboise-fics.tumblr.com/post/167623553977/when-sansa-has-yet-to-conceive-after-a-year-of)


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